Fisking Joel Cosgrove

Back in May, Vuwsa education vice-president and Workers Party member Joel Cosgrove wrote an article ‘Freedom from what?’ in Salient. Joel’s piece was in response to an earlier article by Lukas Schroeter and Peter McCaffrey in which they argued in favour of voluntary membership.

Here at the international headquarters of Student Choice, we’ve been rather busy so we’ve only just got round to reading Joel’s article. Let’s take a look at his argument:

In last week’s Salient, resident right wing witches Lukas Schroeter and co. looked at the issue of VSM.

First sentence and Cosgrove has already resorted to ad hominen attack.

They say that VUWSA asks no one if it does a good job. Yet 3500 students gave up on average 30 minutes last year answering an in-depth survey ABOUT VUWSA concerning what VUWSA does well, what it doesn’t do well and what it could do better at and we’ve been implementing that this year.

Cosgrove misconstrues Lukas’s argument. Compulsory membership means that Vuwsa gets income without any effort. This means the association doesn’t need to prove its value to students and never needs to ask if it is doing a good job. This question would take the form of “do you want to join Vuwsa?” Compulsory membership means Vuwsa never needs to ask this question.

I don’t know the obviously lofty standards Student Choice have in terms of consultation, but maybe they can take some time to inform us of them in this year’s survey…

The main question Vuwsa needs to ask is not a survey question directed at forced members. Instead it’s simply ‘do you want to join Vuwsa’. Why is Cosgrove so terrified of this simple question?

The key point of their piece and one they drone on to anyone they come in contact with is the thorny concept of freedom of representation. They tot it out as one of personal choice! Your rights! Freedom! Yet what options exist? Quite simply it is VUWSA or the University in this debate. Nothing else…

The idea that there are only two forms of representation – Vuwsa or VUW - is total and utter rubbish. People are represented when they give others permission to speak on their behalf; this permission can create models which take numerous forms, including voluntary organisations such as political parties, charities or unions.

There is no fantastical marketplace of freedom. This is ignored; they purposefully don’t deal with the outcomes of this supposed freedom.

Hundreds of thousands of New Zealanders enjoy voluntary representation. How does Cosgrove explain this and why can’t tertiary students enjoy this same right?

Go back to the 1999 VSM referendum in which over 70% of Vic students who voted, voted for compulsory unionism.

Red herring. The membership referenda were simply a mechanism which allowed activist students to get everybody else to pay for their hobbies and interests. And if the level of support for Vuwsa is as high as Cosgrove implies, why does the association need compulsory membership?

You’ll see the reports from the Vice-Chancellors Committee backing the status quo i.e. universal student membership.

Of course the vice-chancellors support compulsory membership – it makes their lives easier and they have a tame lobby group on tap which conveniently kicks up a fuss for more government funding of tertiary education.

Why keep it the status quo? Because otherwise it will COST YOU MORE. That is what happened at AUSA. Yes there is no direct AUSA levy as our friendly Student Choicers pointed out, but they forgot to mention that instead the university charges students and it increased the amount charged compared to that of AUSA. They didn’t mention this in their article and yet I have brought this up every time they try and badger me about “voluntary”students’ associations.

The argument that under voluntary membership institutions would simply charge students for the same price as compulsory membership is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of the price charged by compulsory associations.

The price of compulsory membership is not a market price; it’s not set by supply and demand. Instead the price of compulsory membership is a political price; it’s set by a vote.

In turn, a compulsory association’s income is spent on priorities that are determined through a political process. Why would an institution decide to take an arbitrary price – set through a political process and spent on items of unknown value – and add it to the already substantial cost of enrolling at university?

Because students DO have a say. Presidents and Exec members have been rolled for their actions, that is accountability. I mean, if you’re pissed off at a decision made by VUWSA then you can attempt to roll Geoff or me or whom ever you feel is responsible.

The ability to roll a student politician is one level of accountability but it’s a far weaker form than that provided by voluntary membership. Under compulsory membership you can roll a student politician but they’re merely replaced by another student politician. However under voluntary membership, student politicians have to persuade people of the value of membership and provide value on an ongoing basis. If Joel is truly interested in accountability he should support voluntary membership.

VUWSA provides strong support for students. Through clubs support, through Ori and through the staunch representation of the Education Office.

Joel has made the mistake of thinking that things he values are of value to all students. He has no way of knowing this. The only way to determine if the things he’s listed are valued by enough students to make them viable, is to allow students to choose whether or not they fund them.

This could not be provided by the university at the quality and cost that the Students’ Association does.

Of course it couldn’t; the two entities provide, or are supposed to provide, entirely different things. The university’s role is deliver education through tuition. An association’s role is protect and advance the interests of its members. Part of the current mess is caused by associations failing to understand their role and becoming involved in areas where they have no license to operate – such as trying to defend the integrity of the Palestinian elections.

Not happy with how we do things? Stand for election! Come in and make a difference!

Joel seems to forget that students are already ‘in’ – they’re already members. The problem is not with the lack of students’ participation but rather it’s caused by a membership structure that doesn’t need to take account of individual student’s interests.

The only thing that will change with VSM is VUWSA’s independence.

Vuwsa’s independence is a myth. This seen most clearly in its total dependence on the university to collect its income. If Vuwsa wants to be independent it should try collecting its own income without relying on the university.

I’d much rather rely on students than on the university.

Joel the trouble is that Vuwsa does not rely on students. It relies on a law that enables compulsory membership and it relies on the university to collect Vuwsa’s income. If you actually wanted a regime where Vuwsa truly relied on its members you’d support voluntary membership.

For if the world of Lukas and Peter comes about, we’ll only be poorer for it, they will have hijacked the one part of university you do have some control over.

Note the language: votes in the current regime are legitimate, but if students or New Zealanders in general vote for voluntary membership then things have been “highjacked”.

If we’re up shit-creek at the moment, with ever higher student loans, decreasing availability of student allowances as well as higher rents, what they’re talking about only pushes us further up shit-creek, with no paddle in sight.

Hang on Joel, get your story straight. Earlier on you said “VUWSA provides strong support for students” but now you’re saying “we’re up shit creek”. Well, which is it Joel?
________________________________________

Well, so much for Joel’s argument.

You might be asking why Joel would support compulsory membership. In September last year we identified reasons why some people support compulsory membership. One group we identified was “activists who use student money to push their political agenda”.

As mentioned above, Joel is a member of the Workers Party, and items like this make his political agenda quite transparent.

Joel’s poorly argued piece shows he’s more than happy to use compulsory membership and students’ money to promote his own agenda.

The myth of ‘forced representation’

Another justification for compulsory membership that is regularly trotted out involves representation. Apologists argue that all students must be members of an association so that all students are represented.

This argument is flawed in many ways. It assumes that a person will automatically be represented if they’re simply forced to become a member of an organisation. This of course is wrong; would all students automatically be represented if all students were forced to join the National Party?

It also ignores the fact that students are a diverse group with a wide range of opinions. Instead of all students being represented, the views that compulsory associations promote tend to mirror the views of the people in control of the association. In most cases these people hold left wing views, and in most cases the students most obviously misrepresented are those who hold conservative, centre-right or pro-market viewpoints.

Students who support voluntary membership are also misrepresented and side-lined. To illustrate this, look at what happened to the vice-president of the Auckland Institute of Technology.

On 13 June 1994, the New Zealand Herald reported that the executive of a compulsory association sacked a fellow student politician who supported a vote on voluntary membership. The Herald said,

The executive of the Auckland Institute of Technology students’ association has sacked a vice-president who succeeded in calling a special general meeting about compulsory membership.

The association’s Akoranga campus vice-president, Miss Melanie Davis, had raised almost double the number of student signatures required to force such a meeting…

Miss Davis said last night that the executive of the association passed a vote of no confidence in her late last week after asking whether she supported its views against voluntary membership.”

The message here is simple. At its heart, support for compulsory membership means support for a system that enables associations to receive money without earning it. Compulsory associations’ fundamental objective therefore is protecting their source of unearned income. Voluntary membership means an end to unearned income; therefore voluntary membership must be opposed even if that means misrepresenting members who support voluntary membership.

Compulsory associations continually put their own financial interests above the values and opinions of some of their members.

Deconstructing Nicola Kean

Nicola Kean’s 7 May article in Salient on voluntary student association membership has attracted a number of comments on the Salient site, including a complaint from Ms Kean that voluntary membership supporters “haven’t made any substantive criticism of the piece - which doesn’t really aid your argument. You can’t just call me biased because I don’t agree with you.”

So in the interests of fairness and balance – two elements missing from Nicola’s original article – we’d like to review her article.

Nicola writes: The debate over Voluntary Student Membership (VSM) sends a shiver down the spine of most students’ association presidents and exec members across the country.

Voluntary membership does indeed scare the pants off student politicians because vm means the end of ‘money for nothing’. Voluntary associations would have to earn their income rather than having it collected by institutions and delivered on a plate. Currently compulsory associations receive unearned income.

Having wrestled with voluntary student unionism – and for the most part won – in the mid-1990s, a law change in Australia last year and the possibility of a National Government being elected in 2008 means the VSM ghost has returned to haunt students’ associations.

More and more people are realising that there’s something fundamentally wrong with compulsory membership. The Ngai Tauira fraud, the Vuwsa fee increase and the $6000 phone call are manifestations of this fundamental problem. More people now understand that voluntary membership will change the relationship between students and associations and will remove guaranteed funding which leads to so many problems. These people aren’t necessarily anti-student associations; they simply realise that although compulsory membership delivers ship loads of money, it ultimately works against the interests of students. Voluntary associations won’t be perfect but they’ll be a darn sight better than current compulsory ones.

Here’s how it works: every university and polytech in New Zealand has a students’ association – by law only one is recognised on each campus.

Really, what about Maori student associations? Or are they only nominally independent?

With the exception of students at Auckland University, you will automatically become a member when you enrol. And the charge – at Vic $120 per year – is coat-tailed on to your student loan along with the money you pay in course fees.

Now this is true, but it’s funny that when you hear student politicians complaining about the student loan scheme you never hear them complaining about students being able to pay their compulsory association levies through the scheme.

For this you are represented by VUWSA on various committees, and entitled to other services – such as advocacy, orientation and welfare.

This is the most telling line in Nicola’s story. Rather than presenting an objective examination of the issues involved, Nicola has regurgitated the pro-compulsory side’s two main arguments without question. The claim that compulsory associations provide ‘representation’ and ‘services’ is highly contentious and is regularly challenged by voluntary supporters. By blandly repeating the compulsory side’s argument Nicola shows she either doesn’t understand the key issues of the debate or is deliberately attempting to portray compulsion in its best possible light. Either way it undermines her article. If she’d bothered to talk to Student Choice for her article she would have heard this point of view, but maybe that’s why she didn’t want to talk to us.

For Nicola’s benefit, here’s the counter to her claim that compulsory associations provide representation and services.

Just because a person has been forced to join a group it doesn’t mean that they are represented. As we’ve said before – true representation requires permission. You give your permission for a group to represent you by joining that group. No such agreement takes place under compulsory membership therefore there is no legitimate representation.

Nicola, ask yourself two questions:
- if you were forced to join the National Party, would the National Party automatically represent you?

- how does Vuwsa, when it’s promoting policies identical to the Greens, represent the views of students who vote National?

The second claim about ‘services’ brushes a number of issues under the carpet. First, advocacy is a merely a form of representation so see above. Second, you may not want or need any of these ‘services’ but under compulsory membership you’ve been forced to pay for them. If you’re forced to pay for something you don’t want your money has been wasted. How can wasting students’ money be classified as a ‘service’?

In 1997 a bill championed by former MP Michael Laws was passed through Parliament…

Greg has already pointed out that it was Tony Steel and not Michael Laws. Was this an honest mistake or an attempt to link voluntary membership with the terminally uncool Wanganui mayor? Dunno.

Waikato – which was already voluntary – remained so and it has since come back into the compulsory fold.

There’s a huge untold story here, namely that between 1996 and 1999 Waikato students voted for voluntary in three referenda and elected four pro-voluntary executives. The return to compulsory membership came as a result of an extensive campaign by non-Waikato associations including NZUSA and a shonky 11th hour referenda.

The Labour Party is opposed to voluntary association membership…

Even though membership of the Labour Party itself is voluntary. Well avoided Nicola.

Nicola’s not responsible for the following points from NZUSA but while we’re here let’s look at Joey Randall’s arguments.

New Zealand Union of Students’ Associations Co-President, Joey Randall, naturally, disagrees…”Our argument very much is that [the current law] is working, it’s not broken.”

Of course it’s not broken from NZUSA’s perspective; the law means student associations get millions of dollars without lifting a finger.

“Our [NZUSA’s] argument is that a National government would and should have greater priorities in tertiary education than this.”

That’s really useful advice from an organisation that is deeply anti-National and has been for years.

"We [NZUSA] haven’t seen [referenda on the issue]”, he continues, “so there isn’t necessarily the support with students at the moment, as no one has actively tried to get that number of signatures. I would suggest that the majority of students would think that it’s probably working.”

Randall knows that any student who tries to organise a referendum is on a hiding to nothing. They’re immediately up against the local association and NZUSA. That’s how the law is designed. It presents a façade of fairness – if you don’t like compulsory membership then organise a referendum – when in fact the odds are stacked against anyone who goes up against the power of an association. Students realise it’s an uneven playing field so don’t even waste their time trying.

But for Roy, it’s an ideological issue of choice and freedom of association.

Back to Nicola. As others have pointed out, it’s funny how only the voluntary side is motivated by ‘ideology’. Apparently the compulsory side must be operating their agenda without the benefit of ideas.

However, in its current form, the bill would still enable students to switch back to voluntary by referenda.

No it won’t Nicola. Heather’s bill is based on the principle of individual choice, not a majority of people who choose to vote being able to force something onto others.

“I think it’s very interesting when you paint choice as a stark black and white thing,” Randall says. “The reality is students don’t have the amount of choice that they do have under voluntary that they do have under compulsory.”

And the winner of the 2007 Orwell prize for Doublespeak is Joey Randall.

He argues that student unions are different from other unions because of the advocacy services they provide.

What??? Trade unions don’t provide advocacy? And does the provision of advocacy justify compulsion somehow? Hundreds of other incorporated societies provide advocacy but none of them are compulsory. And student associations are not trade unions; associations are merely incorporated societies.

Under a voluntary regime, for example, it may be more difficult for students’ associations to retain seats or choose who will represent their members on committees such as the University Council – as Roy’s bill would seek to repeal the section of the Education Act that rules that Councils must recognise one association per campus.

Utter rubbish Joey. Other groups – staff, alumni, employers – manage to have representatives on councils without compulsory membership. Why can’t that same principle apply to students? When WSU was voluntary Waikato students elected a representative for council in a process that was separate from WSU.

Furthermore, the experience of voluntary membership in New Zealand and Australia thus far has placed students’ associations at the mercy of their institutions.

Compulsory associations are currently totally dependent on institutions because institutions collect fees from students and pass the money to associations. If associations had to collect their own fees how many people do you think would pay? Voluntary associations would have a direct relationship with their members and would be truly independent of institutions.

“From what we’ve seen in Australia”, says Randall, “a lot of unions are folding, a lot of their functions have been dramatically cut down – so a lot of staff have been reduced. Where those staff have been reduced are in the areas that are less likely to make money: advocacy and representation.” In other words, staff that are employed to make sure students aren’t getting a tough deal, investigating academic grievances and providing welfare services are the first to go when the belt is tightened.

If that’s true how does Joey account for the ongoing existence of hundreds of voluntary groups that provide advocacy? Take the Automobile Association for example – they provide direct benefits that attract members and can still provide the sporadic services that members only use occasionally plus they deliver non-specific representation. It’s a matter of getting the balance right.

In some universities in Australia where student unions have survived intact, it has been partially because the university has been providing the associations with money. Auckland has a similar agreement with university management, which Randall says from his experience as a former vice-president limited the ability of the association to stand up to the university. “Each year, the students’ association has a service agreement that they have to renew with the university, and there was always a bit of worry around what that would mean for their ability to advocate for students.”

I don’t necessarily disagree with this. A service agreement can compromise a voluntary association’s independence but what’s more important is that institutions aren’t allowed to use agreements as a backdoor method of funding associations. A voluntary bill needs to make provision for this.

“[AUSA] spends a huge amount of its money signing up members and trying to be attractive to students. What I think is more important is, are they able to deliver for students? Because while during Orientation it might seem great that you’re getting all this free stuff, what I think is more important is, are you getting effective advocacy and support?”

At least AUSA has to consider what students want. Under voluntary, if members feel they’re not getting “effective advocacy and support” they can always leave or not rejoin.

But while in public VUWSA seems like a bunch of morons, in the background academic grievances are sorted out, clubs operate, free bread is distributed, and our athletes didn’t do too badly at the recent Uni Games.

If this is true then Vuwsa could go voluntary and market these benefits to potential members.

Roy is right when she says the VSM issue is about choice. But choice should be made by students, not by right wing politicians in the debating chamber who want to make students’ associations voluntary for almost purely ideological reasons.

More doublespeak. The voluntary view is motivated by ideology as much as the compulsory view. They’re both based on ideology; it’s the quality of the ideas that matters. And our current legislation is based on the ideology of left wing politicians – Nicola doesn’t seem worried about that.

I agree that the “choice should be made by students” but the big issue is what do you mean by “students”? Nicola means a majority of those who vote in referenda and elections and are then able to force their views on others.

Student Choice believes that “students” should mean the individual student. The individual should decide whether or not to join a group. That’s how membership of all other incorporated societies is decided. Membership shouldn’t be forced on an individual as a result of someone else’s vote.

Overall, Nicola demonstrated a bias towards compulsory membership. That’s her right – but students shouldn’t be forced to subsidise the magazine which gives her a platform.

Finally it should be remembered that Nicola is not an impartial reporter attempting to give both sides of the story. As she says herself, “if VSM is voted in, students are going to lose certain things that students’ associations provide. Fullstop.”

Fullstop indeed.

The compulsory apologia: no 2 - fees 'just like tax'

One regularly heard apology for compulsory membership is that compulsory student association fees are 'just like tax' and are therefore justified.

But this week, no less an authority than Russell Brown has given us a handy definition of tax. Writing about the proposed artists' resale royalty, Brown argued the levy is not a tax because, "taxes are rendered to the government."

Got that? Taxes are rendered to the government. Not to incorporated societies. Not to the government and incorporated societies. Just to the government.

So apologists, please remove the 'just like tax' excuse from your apologia. Russell has spoken.

Fees for me but not for thee

Most research at universities is carried out by academics and scientists, but at Victoria University student politicians have made a remarkable breakthrough. Student politicians have just discovered two types of fee increases – bad fee increases and good fee increases.

A bad fee increase is when an institution wants to charge students more for their education.

A good fee increase is when a compulsory student association wants to charge students more for….err, well, for things like quiz nights, cheap bands, and err…car parking.

You can recognise a bad fee increase by student politicians’ rhetoric. Bad fee increases treat students like ‘cash cows’ they say. Student politicians like VUWSA president Geoff Hayward say bad fee increases show a severe and systemic lack of leadership, and “every time fees are raised, the University are literally passing the buck to students.” NZUSA co-pres Joey Randall says Vic council, by wanting to impose a bad fee increase, had “taken the easy road out and focused solely on students in order to increase revenue.” People who vote for bad fee increases are ignoring student opinion and abusing the democratic process.

However a good fee increase is different. When a compulsory student association wants to increase its fee it’s an absolute necessity. Without a good fee increase life as we know it will come to an end. Opponents of good fee increases are greedy and selfish. People who vote for a good fee increase have listened to the overwhelming weight of student opinion and exercised their democratic rights.

So be on the lookout for bad fee increases and good fee increases. If in doubt, remember this simple rule of thumb: students paying more for education is bad, students paying more for compulsory student association membership is good.

Who protects students from student associations?

Help the police – beat yourself up.
- graffiti

Another reason put forward by apologists of compulsory membership is the claim that compulsory associations protect students from the ravages of unsympathetic or hostile institutional employees, policies and processes. The compulsory association is portrayed as the protector of students, wrapping them up in big cosy blanket of collectivism.

However for many individual students the reality has been quite different. Students who have refused to toe an association’s line or have got offside with student politicians have found themselves subject to abuses from the leaders of the very organisations which claim to protect and represent the interests of the individual students.

These abuses include:

• physical violence, threatened and actual
• harassment and intimidation
• threats of legal action
• verbal abuse
• charges of racism or some other form of incorrect thinking, and
• campaigns of abuse and ridicule conducted through student media.
  

Although some of these abuses are difficult (but not impossible) to document, one case from Waikato University in 2003 provides an insight into what happened when one student at Waikato University discovered that rather than the university, the compulsory Waikato Students Union (WSU) had become a major source of stress and humiliation in her life.

In May 2006 the Employment Relations Authority released a report on its investigation into the employment relationship between former WSU employee Jackie de Souza and the Waikato Students’ Union. The hearing arose over conflict between de Souza and her employer, 2003 WSU president Daniel Philpott, dating back to de Souza’s employment and subsequent dismissal as WSU advocacy coordinator in 2003. Ms de Souza also served as WSU vice president from January to February 2003.

The ERA found that Philpott, as de Souza’s employer, had failed to provide her with a safe workplace. The Authority said Philpott had taken actions which caused de Souza “distress and humiliation which was both predictable and unnecessary.” Philpott’s actions stemmed from what the Authority surmised was his “deeply held personal conviction that members of the Executive should not also be employees of the WSU.”

The ERA found that there was evidence to suggest Philpott’s behaviour towards de Souza was a “deliberate and sustained attempt to cause her stress and humiliation.” The Authority found that de Souza had a personal grievance against WSU, and the ERA official commented that “the level of stress suffered by Ms de Souza was at a level more serious than most I have seen”. For that reason he set compensation to de Souza at $10,000, which was at the high end of the range usually awarded by the Authority.

Compulsory membership itself did not cause de Souza’s situation; her treatment after all resulted from the actions of an individual, and bad decisions can occur in voluntary organisations. But compulsory membership did facilitate the environment in which these abuses could take place.

Without compulsory membership WSU would not have had a pool of almost $750,000 which supported a bureaucracy of such a size that fulltime student politicians were required to govern it. These student politicians are often people in their twenties with no experience as managers or employers. They find themselves in charge of large organisations with numerous employees and inevitably mistakes occur.

Some student politicians muddle through without doing too much damage while behind the scenes the fulltime employees run the show. Others get bogged down in organisational issues which can rarely be solved within a single 12 month term. And others make bad decisions which end up costing students thousands of dollars. Given the reporting times the actual costs of bad decisions only emerge years later by which time those responsible and those who knew the details have moved on. Everybody forgets, and next year the association gets another truckload of unearned income.

Compulsory membership puts huge amounts of money is in the hands of people who haven’t earned it and have no experience as employers or in managing organisations as politically-charged as student associations. If they stuff up, the organisation does not suffer any drop in income from dissatisfied members withdrawing or not joining.

Politicians and tertiary governors need to be asked how they can defend a regime which forces students to fund a system which, as the de Souza case illustrates, wastes so much money and damages people in the process.

The compulsory apologia: no 1 – conscientious objection

Although it’s not usually the first argument to be used, one frequently heard apology is the defence of conscientious objection (CO).

Realising that compulsory membership violates the principles of freedom of association, the drafters of the section 229A of the Education Act 1989 built an escape clause into the section which says:

A students association may exempt any student from membership of the association on the grounds of conscientious objection; and, if exempted, the association must pay the student’s membership fee to a charity of its choice.

So the CO defence goes like this: compulsory membership (cm) is not a problem, and in fact NZ does not even have compulsory membership, because anyone who objects to cm can apply to be exempted from membership through a process of conscientious objection.

There are a number of serious problems with this argument.

The first concerns the principle of a right. The right to freedom of association is defined as a civil and political right – something which New Zealanders should be able to exercise, without hindrance and as of right, through our status as citizens.

The CO defence implicitly acknowledges that cm violates freedom of association, but maintains that this is acceptable because CO exists as a possible remedy.

This line of argument negates the notion of a right. It asks us to accept the violation of a right because a process exists whereby that right can be won through an appeal to a committee, rather than as something which is the natural entitlement of each citizen.

The second problem concerns the nature of conscientious objection. In the past, CO has been an option to exempt people from a role or from a form of membership deemed to be sufficiently important to the national interest to justify a level of compulsion. For example, compulsory military service or, 30 or so years ago in the context of the planned economy, compulsory trade union membership.

Membership of a private (non government) association – in the case of student associations, an incorporated society – is not of sufficient national importance to justify compulsion.

We don’t have laws allowing people to conscientiously object from the Automobile Association or the Red Cross.

The third problem concerns the mechanics of the CO process. These are represented by a number of barriers which any student wanting to CO must cross.

Barrier 1
Despite a requirement to do so in the Act, the CO option is not widely publicised. Most students don’t even know it exists.

Barrier 2
Any student who discovers the CO option soon understands it is bureaucratic, time consuming, confrontational, and ultimately futile. A plaintiff has to make his case before a committee which may partially or entirely comprise representatives from the very student association he is attempting to gain exemption from.

Barrier 3
His exemption is not automatic. He has to plead his case and demonstrate to the tribunal that his objection is genuinely one of conscience and not frivolous or an attempt to merely save money or score a cheap political point.

Some CO processes have imposed their own definition of what constitutes an objection of conscience, declining to hear objections based on opposition to forced membership, claiming these are political and ideological rather than conscientious grounds.

In other cases students appealing for a CO have been subject to cross examination and humiliation by the CO tribunal, who argue that by merely bringing a claim for exemption a student is guilty of greed by attempting to undermine the collective enterprise.

Barrier 4
In the event that a plaintiff successfully argues his case and is granted a CO, the student does not get his money back. The student’s money is paid to a charity of the association’s choosing. So if your objection is that you don’t like having your money taken away from you to purchase things you don’t want or need then CO provides no solution and your objection is void before you start.

Conclusion
CO presents no solution to the problem of compulsory membership. The civil right of freedom of association should be the inherent entitlement of every citizen, not something that can be granted or denied at the whim of a committee.

Hey man, that’s just a lie: the compulsory apologia

Deep in the night, when they’re alone with their consciences, if they’re really being honest with themselves, most intelligent supporters of compulsory membership know that compulsory membership is wrong.

The case for voluntary membership – on the grounds of freedom of association alone – is overwhelming. Yet for various reasons – political, ideological, career advancement, or pure hostility to anything perceived as ‘right wing’ – compulsion supporters just can’t bring themselves to abandon their position and admit compulsory membership is wrong.

In order to defend something which they know is morally indefensible, compulsion supporters have developed a number of myths they tell themselves. These myths are so ingrained in compulsion supporters’ rhetorical armoury that they’re able to trot them out without examining the validity of their argument. The myths have become a form of political catechism which compulsion supporters habitually chant whenever voluntary membership is raised.

All of the arguments made in defence of compulsory membership are seriously flawed. The pro-compulsory argument is often surrounded by lofty or legalistic sounding words – such as universal and democratic - and is made quickly, so the compulsory advocate can scurry off without having to stop and think about what they’re saying or have their ideas examined.

Compulsion supporters rarely stick around to defend their arguments. When challenged they inevitably change tack and resort to a second line of defence consisting of ‘time to move on’ lines such as:
- voluntary membership is a non-issue so I can’t be bothered discussing it
- students have already voted so the issue is over
- the people promoting voluntary membership are not cool
- there are more important issues such as student debt, loans, climate change etc

Over the next few posts we’ll be looking at the most common components of the compulsory apologia.

compulsory membership: it's all about money

If you're involved in a compulsory student association, there are two rules you must always remember.

1. Compulsory membership is all about money. In particular, it's all about you being able to stick your hand into students' pockets and take their money without their consent.
2. Regardless of what else happens, always think about how it affects rule number one.

Forget about fees, loans and allowances. Forget about social justice, gender equality, globalisation and all that nonsense; your absolute number one priority is to protect your stream of unearned income. This means defending compulsory membership at all costs.

The massive increase student numbers in recent years has caused compulsory student associations to become large wealthy organisations. A lot of people now have a lot at stake with compulsory associations be it as:
- student politicians using associations to promote their worldview or gain experience before they move onto 'real' politics or jobs in the trade union movement
- employees in highly protected positions who have to stuff up really, really badly before they get fired
- activists who use student money to push their political agenda
- student media types who get to play at running their own magazine or radio station
- student sport types who can't believe their luck that there's a system which means other students have to subsidise their hobbies.

All of these people have a very strong vested interest in seeing compulsory membership continue to deliver a free flow of money.

That's why, as a compulsory membership supporter, you must do everything to ensure you continue to receive unearned income. Even if you've publicly opposed university fee increases you must be prepared to support student association fee increases.

Remember - it's all about money.